“How do you suppose he caught it?” asked the C. O. I said nothing. Fishing with hand-grenades is strictly against the law. Mauvages, December 18. Mauvages is in disgrace. Mauvages is the black sheep in the Y. fold. Mauvages is in wrong all the way around. And it’s all because of one Old Gentleman and his ill-timed opinions. The Old Gentleman came out to talk to us yesterday evening. We weren’t expecting him. We were expecting a lecture on the Man Without a Country,—whoever that may be, Jack Johnson or the Kaiser! as the boys say,—by the Educational Department. But then we have almost given up expecting to get what we expect. This is only the third time we have been fooled on the Man Without a Country who appears to be our Old Man of the Sea. The Old Gentleman was brought out in state in the best Y. car by the Big Chief, the Entertainment Department and a driver. The Entertainment Department immediately ensconced himself by the cook-stove with a Sunday Picture Supplement; the driver retired to a secluded corner to play a game of checkers with one of the boys; while the Big Chief took his stand out front. I for once back-slid scandalously, and, instead of occupying a front seat with a deeply interested expression spread upon my countenance, sat in the kitchen and ate jam and waffles, the waffles which were heart-shaped and crisp and heavenly, having been brought by Nick from his latest supper party. The Old Gentleman stood out by the stove, the stage proving too chilly. There was a crowd in the hut. He put his foot in it at the start. He announced himself as an intimate friend of ex-President Roosevelt. The boys, sniffing politics, grew suspicious, even hostile. He began on the scandal of America’s unpreparedness, from that passed by degrees to the view that Germany was not yet defeated and as a climax called upon the boys to rise and put themselves on record as being willing to stay in France until Kingdom come, if necessary, in order to do the job up brown. The boys did not rise. Instead they heckled the Old Gentleman until he grew as red as a turkey-cock and so indignant as to fairly wax speechless. One of the ammunition train boys, a husky lad who, they tell me, is an old guard house standby, led the opposition. Out in the kitchen you could have heard a pin drop. The Entertainment Department and I sat and stared at each other.